Now these are true critics

[Euphony]

Can't win 'em all I guess.

You could if you were a real man who knew how to tune an engine, Sally.

 

[Euphony]

If you dumb down to the lowest common denominator, you get smut for simpletons or twelve year olds.

But you make the top lists!

 

[ElectricBlue]

But you make the top lists!

So?

 

[Euphony]

So?

Exactly.

Though some round here equate placement as some sign of quality.

I've nearly abandoned using the list to find reads. It's beyond depressing (for the most part)

 

[ElectricBlue]

Exactly.

Though some round here equate placement as some sign of quality.

I've nearly abandoned using the list to find reads. It's beyond depressing (for the most part)

I abandoned the usefulness of the Top Lists within two weeks of signing up to Lit, ten years ago. I don't think I've wandered back since.

 

[Euphony]

I abandoned the usefulness of the Top Lists within two weeks of signing up to Lit, ten years ago. I don't think I've wandered back since.

it helps when stretching yourself into categories you aren't familiar with. Very quickly you get a sense of the tropes and expectations v. what you self-imply from the section header.

I'd give anything to dump the chapters soaking up 1/2 of the placements. It's no nevermind to me but I understand there are fledglings who haven't developed author's resilience and some success can light a fire.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

If you dumb down to the lowest common denominator, you get smut for simpletons or twelve year olds.

Which was exactly my point.

Based upon the age requirements of the site, expectations for age appropriate reading levels always being present are frequently not met.

 

[gunhilltrain]

it helps when stretching yourself into categories you aren't familiar with. Very quickly you get a sense of the tropes and expectations v. what you self-imply from the section header.

I'd give anything to dump the chapters soaking up 1/2 of the placements. It's no nevermind to me but I understand there are fledglings who haven't developed author's resilience and some success can light a fire.

The problem with that is that you are a risk of doing whatever the popular tropes are and you may never develop your own take on a topic.

 

[Euphony]

The problem with that is that you are a risk of doing whatever the popular tropes are and you may never develop your own take on a topic.

True though the number one killer of future contributors is not writing.

What you and I want from our writings vs. the standard uploader are likely very different things.

Novel takes on category tropes aren't usually rewarded (and I'd argue not what the general audience wants)

Votes are like movie ticket returns, familiarity generates a lot of the traction. (see sequels to the horizon and super hero everything)

 

[gunhilltrain]

True though the number one killer of future contributors is not writing.

What you and I want from our writings vs. the standard uploader are likely very different things.

Novel takes on category tropes aren't usually rewarded (and I'd argue not what the general audience wants)

Votes are like movie ticket returns, familiarity generates a lot of the traction. (see sequels to the horizon and super hero everything)

That's why I'm glad I'm not a director, or an actor, or a screenwriter. (Or in fact a professional writer, although sometimes I wish I could get paid for this.)

Even Kubrick and such had to be concerned with box office revenues. However, we can fail constantly to reach a wide audience and never get kicked off Lit.

Now if money was involved, then we'd have to show some results; we'd be forced to please some audience. I read a book by a guy who wrote porn movie scripts, and he did have to make a profit for his bosses. Being subtle was not a requirement.

 

[Euphony]

That's why I'm glad I'm not a director, or an actor, or a screenwriter. (Or in fact a professional writer, although sometimes I wish I could get paid for this.)

Even Kubrick and such had to be concerned with box office revenues. However, we can fail constantly to reach a wide audience and never get kicked off Lit.

Now if money was involved, then we'd have to show some results; we'd be forced to please some audience. I read a book by a guy who wrote porn movie scripts, and he did have to make a profit for his bosses. Being subtle was not a requirement.

With the current media consumption landscape, the only people with any justification to be in the business are those otherwise compelled to do the work for themselves for free.

It's impressive in a morbid sense that Hollywood has very much marginalized the folks who are the key driver of all stories (and media is essentially different forms of storytelling)

Sequels, red meat for fanbases, the fast fooding (ain't gotta be good but it's gotta meet the bare need without much effort on the consumers part) Commodification has worked, marketplace wise.

 

[gunhilltrain]

One of the things that's fascinating about the Titanic sinking and the narrative about it is that, despite eyewitness accounts, it wasn't widely accepted that it split in two until the wreckage was found on the bottom of the ocean in the 1980s. In the '58 film, it sinks without breaking. In the 1970s potboiler novel Raise the Titanic, which I read as a teen, the ship was raised intact from the bottom of the sea, so people still believed that was possible, which it wasn't. It wasn't until the 1980s discovery and James Cameron's film that the public understanding was completely revised to accept that it broke in two before sinking.

It raises the interesting question: when you write a story, which version of the "truth" do you accept?

It has been shown that eyewitness accounts of anything can be unreliable. The lights on the Titanic went out soon before it sank, so people in the boats couldn't see what was happening very well. By the way, very few ships are raised after sinking because it's so difficult to do that, even in shallow water. Yet there have been reports that Chinese companies are taking parts of sunken World War II ships in order to sell the scrap metal. They are "harvesting" the steel while the ships remain in place.

 

[RetroFan]

Did you read A Night to Remember or see the movie version of it before or during writing the story?

I mentioned elsewhere that high school - the idea of stratifying people by age cohorts and putting them all in one big building - is both a recent and a very artificial environment. It was developed in the 19th Century as a way to prepare people for the workforce (not that they do a very good job of that) and also to keep them out of the workforce until needed.

I have read Walter Lord's 'A Night to Remember' and seen the film from 1958 and love them both. For some reason its become fashionable to dislike James Cameron's 1997 epic Titanic in more recent years, but I still love it, the film is an absolute masterpiece. And as I noted in a comment on my story, neither Walter Lord nor James Cameron had the advantages of being able to use Google or a Youtube video when working on their wonderful Titanic works like I did. I also liked the under-rated SOS Titanic movie in 1979 although I haven't seen it for years. I haven't seen the 1953 Titanic movie starring Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyk, but I did watch a video about the film and while the movie is actually quite well done for its time, a major mistake is dialogue especially with young characters. They behave and speak like contemporary teenagers in 1952 using slang and expressions simply not used 40 years previously when the Titanic sank in 1912. One Titanic work I have a soft spot for although its many years out of print is a children's book about the Titanic (which caused me to first become interested in the ship), beautifully written and illustrated along with photos of the actual ship and passengers, and told through the eyes of teenage passengers Jack Thayer Junior and Ruth Becker, from First and Second Class respectively. I know romance novelist Danielle Steele wrote a novel set on the Titanic, but I haven't read it.

As to be expected with any story posted here some readers weren't impressed with my efforts and no doubt added my story to the list of bad Titanic works over the years. But even without my story, there's quite a number of Titanic works that aren't very good. Like a cartoon made for kids about the disaster made circa 2000 so bad and so bizarre it was actually thought for some time to be an urban myth. A 1996 Titanic mini-series featuring a then young and relatively unknown Catherine Zeta Jones was pretty terrible. But that mini-series looks closer in quality to James Cameron's Titanic blockbuster when compared to a mini-series from 2012 to commemorate the centenary of the sinking. While liberties are taken with writing historical fiction (and I can't claim not to have done the same to some extent) the depiction of some real-life passengers and crew was a disgrace, to the point of being libellous. For example one of the ship's senior officers is depicted as a bad-tempered, tyrannical bully, when in real life he was a well respected and much liked officer, and a hero of the disaster who went down with the ship. Other passengers and crew whose actions that night might be best classed as misguided are instead upgraded to being flat out villains. At least I treated the real passengers and crew referenced in my story with respect and dignity.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I have read Walter Lord's 'A Night to Remember' and seen the film from 1958 and love them both. For some reason its become fashionable to dislike James Cameron's 1997 epic Titanic in more recent years, but I still love it, the film is an absolute masterpiece. And as I noted in a comment on my story, neither Walter Lord nor James Cameron had the advantages of being able to use Google or a Youtube video when working on their wonderful Titanic works like I did. I also liked the under-rated SOS Titanic movie in 1979 although I haven't seen it for years. I haven't seen the 1953 Titanic movie starring Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyk, but I did watch a video about the film and while the movie is actually quite well done for its time, a major mistake is dialogue especially with young characters. They behave and speak like contemporary teenagers in 1952 using slang and expressions simply not used 40 years previously when the Titanic sank in 1912. One Titanic work I have a soft spot for although its many years out of print is a children's book about the Titanic (which caused me to first become interested in the ship), beautifully written and illustrated along with photos of the actual ship and passengers, and told through the eyes of teenage passengers Jack Thayer Junior and Ruth Becker, from First and Second Class respectively. I know romance novelist Danielle Steele wrote a novel set on the Titanic, but I haven't read it.

As to be expected with any story posted here some readers weren't impressed with my efforts and no doubt added my story to the list of bad Titanic works over the years. But even without my story, there's quite a number of Titanic works that aren't very good. Like a cartoon made for kids about the disaster made circa 2000 so bad and so bizarre it was actually thought for some time to be an urban myth. A 1996 Titanic mini-series featuring a then young and relatively unknown Catherine Zeta Jones was pretty terrible. But that mini-series looks closer in quality to James Cameron's Titanic blockbuster when compared to a mini-series from 2012 to commemorate the centenary of the sinking. While liberties are taken with writing historical fiction (and I can't claim not to have done the same to some extent) the depiction of some real-life passengers and crew was a disgrace, to the point of being libellous. For example one of the ship's senior officers is depicted as a bad-tempered, tyrannical bully, when in real life he was a well respected and much liked officer, and a hero of the disaster who went down with the ship. Other passengers and crew whose actions that night might be best classed as misguided are instead upgraded to being flat out villains. At least I treated the real passengers and crew referenced in my story with respect and dignity.

The 1953 Titanic used to be on network TV (cut up by commercials of course) which is where I saw it. Barbara Stanwyck as the female lead was 46, quite a bit younger than Kate Winslet had been. It was intended, I guess, to be seen by adults. It was a decent movie, and had the virtue of being only about ninety minutes long. The movie pretty much ends with the sinking; the Carpathia doesn't make an appearance, although it might be mentioned earlier.

Mike Brady of Ocean Liner Designs recently released this documentary about the Lusitania. It was a horrifying event too, especially since it was a deliberate act of war. It sank in about eighteen minutes and, as shown, the attempts to launch lifeboats went disastrously.

 

[Voboy]

Mike Brady of Ocean Liner Designs recently released this documentary about the Lusitania. It was a horrifying event too, especially since it was a deliberate act of war. It sank in about eighteen minutes and, as shown, the attempts to launch lifeboats went disastrously.

Dead Wake, by Erik Larson, is a readable and accurate account. Lusitania went down just over ten miles offshore; they could see the coast as the torpedoes struck.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Dead Wake, by Erik Larson, is a readable and accurate account. Lusitania went down just over ten miles offshore; they could see the coast as the torpedoes struck.

It might as well have been a hundred miles. I didn't realize that it took three hours for rescue boats to arrive.

I think there has only been one ship sunk by a submarine since World War II, during the Falklands War in 1982. If there ever is a naval war off the coast of China - I certainly hope it doesn't happen - we will be shocked again at what submarines are capable of doing.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

It has been shown that eyewitness accounts of anything can be unreliable. The lights on the Titanic went out soon before it sank, so people in the boats couldn't see what was happening very well. By the way, very few ships are raised after sinking because it's so difficult to do that, even in shallow water. Yet there have been reports that Chinese companies are taking parts of sunken World War II ships in order to sell the scrap metal. They are "harvesting" the steel while the ships remain in place.

Do you believe in this new theory about, saying that it's actually the Muritania out there, because allegedly the sisters names were swapped after Titanic was repaired from its fire in port.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

I have read Walter Lord's 'A Night to Remember' and seen the film from 1958 and love them both. For some reason its become fashionable to dislike James Cameron's 1997 epic Titanic in more recent years, but I still love it, the film is an absolute masterpiece. And as I noted in a comment on my story, neither Walter Lord nor James Cameron had the advantages of being able to use Google or a Youtube video when working on their wonderful Titanic works like I did. I also liked the under-rated SOS Titanic movie in 1979 although I haven't seen it for years. I haven't seen the 1953 Titanic movie starring Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyk, but I did watch a video about the film and while the movie is actually quite well done for its time, a major mistake is dialogue especially with young characters. They behave and speak like contemporary teenagers in 1952 using slang and expressions simply not used 40 years previously when the Titanic sank in 1912. One Titanic work I have a soft spot for although its many years out of print is a children's book about the Titanic (which caused me to first become interested in the ship), beautifully written and illustrated along with photos of the actual ship and passengers, and told through the eyes of teenage passengers Jack Thayer Junior and Ruth Becker, from First and Second Class respectively. I know romance novelist Danielle Steele wrote a novel set on the Titanic, but I haven't read it.

As to be expected with any story posted here some readers weren't impressed with my efforts and no doubt added my story to the list of bad Titanic works over the years. But even without my story, there's quite a number of Titanic works that aren't very good. Like a cartoon made for kids about the disaster made circa 2000 so bad and so bizarre it was actually thought for some time to be an urban myth. A 1996 Titanic mini-series featuring a then young and relatively unknown Catherine Zeta Jones was pretty terrible. But that mini-series looks closer in quality to James Cameron's Titanic blockbuster when compared to a mini-series from 2012 to commemorate the centenary of the sinking. While liberties are taken with writing historical fiction (and I can't claim not to have done the same to some extent) the depiction of some real-life passengers and crew was a disgrace, to the point of being libellous. For example one of the ship's senior officers is depicted as a bad-tempered, tyrannical bully, when in real life he was a well respected and much liked officer, and a hero of the disaster who went down with the ship. Other passengers and crew whose actions that night might be best classed as misguided are instead upgraded to being flat out villains. At least I treated the real passengers and crew referenced in my story with respect and dignity.

For those of us who's seen the movie, it's nothing to do with fashion and all to do with it's insufferable and a waste of two hours.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

It might as well have been a hundred miles. I didn't realize that it took three hours for rescue boats to arrive.

I think there has only been one ship sunk by a submarine since World War II, during the Falklands War in 1982. If there ever is a naval war off the coast of China - I certainly hope it doesn't happen - we will be shocked again at what submarines are capable of doing.

That was still the era of steam and it takes a bit to make it, then they had to find the boat.

 

[gunhilltrain]

That was still the era of steam and it takes a bit to make it, then they had to find the boat.

If you watch the documentary, the cruiser Juno could have gotten there in an hour or so. The coordinates of the ship's final location were well known. However, the British navy recalled the Juno. The Royal Navy had lost a number of warships to submarine attacks, and they were very wary of them. Maybe they should have made the attempt anyway.

Most modern ships have diesel-electric power and a few warships have nuclear reactors (all American subs now, for example). However, I don't think that most of them are appreciably faster than ships during the age of steam.

 

[gunhilltrain]

For those of us who's seen the movie, it's nothing to do with fashion and all to do with it's insufferable and a waste of two hours.

Which of the Titanic movies are you referring to?

 

[M_K_Babalon]

If you watch the documentary, the cruiser Juno could have gotten there in an hour or so. The coordinates of the ship's final location were well known. However, the British navy recalled the Juno. The Royal Navy had lost a number of warships to submarine attacks, and they were very wary of them. Maybe they should have made the attempt anyway.

Most modern ships have diesel-electric power and a few warships have nuclear reactors (all American subs now, for example). However, I don't think that most of them are appreciably faster than ships during the age of steam.

If I recall diesel boats started coming about in the teens, but some large ship manufacturers such as Culine were apprehensive about using the technology on large boats such as cruise ships as it was fairly new. Much like how early steamers still used sails. Steam turbines had already been around a few years and that was the hottest thing, even though it failed for locomotives. Some nuclear powered boats use that to power steam turbines, some use it to power an electric drive. Both are faster to get up to operational temps than coal or oil fired steam boats.

Engine type is only a single part of how fast they are. Hull design, weight, draft are also factors. One reason oceanliners were so fast was oddly enough their size. The Titanic was one of the fastest for its time, and I believe edged out a few mph faster than even the Lusitania, even with its single prop drive to Lusi's four. One drafted oceanliner could actually outrun some of the warships it worked with.

I was talking about the film with DiCaprio.

 

[gunhilltrain]

If I recall diesel boats started coming about in the teens, but some large ship manufacturers such as Culine were apprehensive about using the technology on large boats such as cruise ships as it was fairly new. Much like how early steamers still used sails. Steam turbines had already been around a few years and that was the hottest thing, even though it failed for locomotives. Some nuclear powered boats use that to power steam turbines, some use it to power an electric drive. Both are faster to get up to operational temps than coal or oil fired steam boats.

Engine type is only a single part of how fast they are. Hull design, weight, draft are also factors. One reason oceanliners were so fast was oddly enough their size. The Titanic was one of the fastest for its time, and I believe edged out a few mph faster than even the Lusitania, even with its single prop drive to Lusi's four. One drafted oceanliner could actually outrun some of the warships it worked with.

I was talking about the film with DiCaprio.

I'm not an expert on ship propulsion. Diesel (or gasoline?) engines were always used on submarines going back before World War I. Most other ships converted from coal to fuel oil right around the end of the war. The first diesel-powered passenger ships appeared in the 1930's I think, but steam was used on the Queen Elizabeth 2 when it was built in the 1960's, and it was later converted to gas-turbine engines.

The Juno was a particularly old cruiser (1894) and could do about 18 knots at most. It was considered vulnerable to submarine attack because of it's slow speed. Perhaps it should have been sent on a rescue mission anyway, but history is full of these "might-have-been" events.

But yeah, speed was considered a selling point for passenger ships right up to the 1950's. Modern cruise ships can do abut 22 knots, not as fast as the best of the old liners but still a respectable speed.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Most modern ships have diesel-electric power and a few warships have nuclear reactors (all American subs now, for example). However, I don't think that most of them are appreciably faster than ships during the age of steam.

You need to define what you mean by the "age of steam". If you mean reciprocating engines or triple expansion engines (pistons going up and down), then the maximum speed might have been 15 knots or so. But steam turbines, fuelled by coal or oil, pushed up to 22 - 23 knots by the beginning of the first world war - the dreadnoughts. The huge Japanese and American battleships launched in the 1930s were faster (and much bigger - twice or three times the tonnage).

The Soviets put the fear of God up the American navy in the 1980s when an Akula class nuclear boat was recorded doing over 30 knots underwater, which is fast - at the time, faster than most USN aircraft carriers. Bloody noisy, though, they tracked it across the Pacific.

 

[Bramblethorn]

It has been shown that eyewitness accounts of anything can be unreliable. The lights on the Titanic went out soon before it sank, so people in the boats couldn't see what was happening very well. By the way, very few ships are raised after sinking because it's so difficult to do that, even in shallow water. Yet there have been reports that Chinese companies are taking parts of sunken World War II ships in order to sell the scrap metal. They are "harvesting" the steel while the ships remain in place.

For a while, steel from WWII and earlier wrecks was in high demand for use in radiation-sensitive equipment (Geiger counters etc.) Steel manufactured post-1945 was contaminated by radioactive elements circulating in the atmosphere due to nuclear testing, and obviously if you make something like a Geiger counter out of material that already contains radioactive elements that's going to impede its usefulness.

It's less of an issue these days; nobody's done atmospheric testing in decades, so most of that contamination is gone.